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One of three women involved in a series of assaults that ended in a murder charge against a London man has told her story to The Free Press and it raises more questions about the police and courts.

“I thought I was going to die in the basement that day,” the woman said in a Facebook message chat.

“I was also shocked all he was charged with was assault . . .”

The account she provided contains several similarities to what’s known about the other two incidents, and behaviour that experts say should have made police and the courts extra cautious in dealing with the accused.

“It is really, really important everybody in the justice system understands risk. We don’t want to take chances when there are high risk factors,” Barbara MacQuarrie, community director at Western University for the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children, said Monday.

Oluwatobi Boyede, 25, was charged two weeks ago with second-degree murder in the death of Josie Glenn, 26.

Court documents show Boyede also was charged Feb. 26 with assaulting one woman. The court document names the woman and contains another identifying feature.

Contacted by The Free Press, the woman confirmed she was the alleged target of the assault.

In March, Boyede was charged with assaulting, choking and confining a sex worker in an incident that took place Feb. 16.

He was released on bail in April.

In July, he was re-arrested, on suspicion of breaking his curfew — one of his bail conditions — and released again.

The remains of Glenn, who worked in a body rub parlour, were found at Boyede’s family’s home at 252 South Leaksdale Circle in the Summerside subdivision in southeast London on Oct. 27.

Boyede hasn’t entered a plea in the second-degree murder charge. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March on all the earlier charges against him.

“This is making my heart hurt for her family,” said the woman who spoke to The Free Press.

The woman says she isn’t a sex worker but was a friend of Boyede’s. She was visiting his house when she was asked for sex, she says. She said no and asked that a cab be called.

The woman said she then was choked “so hard I had passed out but woke up screaming and fighting for my life.”

She got away, made it home and called police, the woman said.

“I told them everything about the choking, all of it,” she said.

That allegation should have alerted authorities to the risk of further problems, experts say.

“Choking is very high-risk, very high-risk behaviour,” MacQuarrie said, wondering aloud why police or the Crown didn’t include the charge of choking in the Feb. 26 incident, and why Boyede was released on bail.

“We know about high risk, the kinds of situations that can lead to death. Until we really enforce conditions, they are meaningless.”

Western University criminology professor Michael Arntfield said choking charges are a clue to criminal behaviour often associated with sexually motivated crimes.

“Choking is in the (Criminal) Code because they recognized years ago that this reflects a very specific sexual motive in most cases,” he said.

“By charging it properly, you can flag the case and recognize and track it more effectively.”

Laying the charge can act as an early warning mechanism for future behaviour, he said.

And, he gave a startling statistic: 90 per cent of murderers charged with sexually motivated homicides or in the deaths of sex workers “employ some degree of strangling.”

“It’s a charging issue that needs to be standardized,” he said. “That absolutely needs to be charged properly for the purposes of identifying and getting this person into the system as a strangler, whether or not they’re a homicidal strangler, yet.”

All three incidents are connected to Boyede’s home, which he shared with parents and siblings.

The woman who spoke to The Free Press said she was assaulted there. The Free Press has learned the alleged assault on the sex worker took place there. And Glenn’s remains were found there.

That also may have been a key sign for police and the courts.

There’s a kind of assailant called a trapper, Arntfield says. The trapper, he said, can control the crime scene more effectively and doesn’t have to worry about transporting victims to a second crime scene to dispose of evidence.

Often, the trapper is an older offender, “people who tend to typically lack the strength, agility and criminal sophistication to be able to confidently navigate public spaces with either a victim in their vehicle or feel that they can get away if they were to dispose of the body in public.”

They also have a need to control all aspects of their crime.

Trappers are rare, Arntfield said, especially in Canada where there are ample places to hide evidence.

And usually they live alone.

The characteristics are “consistent with what we’ve seen with serial offenders targeting outcall escorts,” such as Robert Pickton, the serial killer who lured women to his pig farm in B.C., Arntfield said.